How on earth do people cope financially in the UK?

The main thing is. How on earth do you make it work on 20k? If you're take home is 1300 quid a month..you pay about £100 council tax, maybe £700 in rent, £20 on your phone, £30 on utilities, £130 on your travel card? It leaves you about £200 a month to live on.

Are you sure it wasn't E3000 a month?
Just looking at Payscale.com, it seems the median for 'Physician / Doctor, General Practice' is $55k in Bucharest. No idea how good their data is though - it looks like quite a small sample group:

Nope they definitely said per year - this is just what I was told so may not have been accurate. This is quite a while ago too, and things seemed to be changing rapidly in general from the two visits I went on a year apart (loads more fancy cars on the roads the second time rather than knackered old Dachias for example).

Also, apparently doctors almost all top up their wages by taking bribes, eg to bump people up waiting lists. Again, this is just what we were told by locals.

According to a UKIP blog average wages in Romania are now 347 euros a month after tax. Not sure how that compares to the UK but I strongly suspect your average UK citizen is Koch better off than your average Romanian citizen, despite it being a 'cheap' country.

I have no idea which coffee machine is used in my house. Indeed, I think I saw the kitchens once, but was shooed away rather quickly by an unpleasantly large woman. I merely clap my hands and espresso arrives within a few minutes. Marvellous.

Whats more lots of people seem to have new cars, take holidays abroad, buy new carbon road bikes...where the hell does all this money come from?!

This is where your assumption is incorect IMO. There's very little 'and'.

When I worked up north in Middlesbrough* and rented a 3 bed house for <£500/month, those in employment generaly drove nice cars (Financed or 3-6yr old BMW's, Audi's etc). I live in Wokingham** and the car park is full of 6-10 year old Ford Focus.

That's only anecdotal, and probably subject to observational bias. But the same applied to bikes too (far more SS's down south, >50% of the northerners were on new-ish Santa Cruz and I was the only SS). Also I think southerners seemed to spend more weekends doing DIY, northerners always seemed to have tradesmen in doing the work.

That's just my observation having worked in 2 offices for the same company at two different ends of the country, so similar demographics and earnings in different siuations. Obviously there are a lot of poorer northerners and richer southerners as well.

*pretty much the most deprived place in England, the ICI Petrochems site went from 100,000 staff to 10,000 in alsmost no time at all, similar story at the steel plant, and all the associated ironstone, limestone and coal mining villages nearby.

**3rd most expensive place in the UK outside London, 1 bed flat would be £500+

The main thing is. How on earth do you make it work on 20k? If you're take home is 1300 quid a month. you pay about £100 council tax, maybe £700 in rent, £20 on your phone, £30 on utilities, £130 on your travel card? It leaves you about £200 a month to live on.

You save 75 quid by getting a bus pass not a travelcard, you save a tenner by not having an expensive phone, you share a room with someone else which cuts down on the rent or live somewhere absolutely minging.

Median salary in London is about £34000, so if you get an average job in London, you don't have it so bad obviously.

But the same applied to bikes too (far more SS's down south, >50% of the northerners were on new-ish Santa Cruz and I was the only SS).

Thats nowt to do with cash! That's just because we've got proper hills, and big pointy rocks, and stuff. So need gears and suspension. And our bikes get hammered because we can go out riding all the time without having to drive 100 miles! Though to be honest, 90% own an Orange 5

I also know how difficult it is. Especially to get on the housing ownership ladder and break away from renting. I live in the South East (not quite London but near) and find it funny on forums when people tell you not to live there like it's a practical solution. Yes, I'm going to move away from my family and children's schools and friends of years gone by, so I can live up North with cheaper housing and comparatively lower job earnings so I'm basically the same in terms of disposable income anyway. No.

I earn enough to survive and occasionally buy something. To get my MTB, I had to buy something old and second hand. How people just pluck 2K out on a new one every few years is like....how the? I've owned cars worth much less!

Thats nowt to do with cash! That's just because we've got proper hills, and big pointy rocks, and stuff. So need gears and suspension. And our bikes get hammered because we can go out riding all the time without having to drive 100 miles! Though to be honest, 90% own an Orange 5

Yup, but it does kinda dispell the stereotype that everyone at Swinley rides a 150mm travel carbon superbike and everyone up north rides an On-One.

Bessides, the only places the SS felt out of it's depth was on those long straight moorland bridleway decents where everyone else could pedal away! :-p

I live in the South East (not quite London but near) and find it funny on forums when people tell you not to live there like it's a practical solution. Yes, I'm going to move away from my family and children's schools and friends of years gone by, so I can live up North with cheaper housing and comparatively lower job earnings so I'm basically the same in terms of disposable income anyway.

Unfortunately housing policy in this country, such as it is, is presently geared, as always, to keeping the baby boomers of the home counties in Range Rovers, by maintaining an artificially inflated housing market in the south east, so they can carry on sucking at the teet of property equity/credit. Hence Georges absolutely insane Help to Buy scheme. Pumping billions of taxpayers money to prop up property prices, an re-inflate the bubble by fuelling insane price escalation

The housing market in this country is completely unsustainable. Has been for years. But rather than allow the much-needed correction (as all independent experts seem to recommend), they've decided to replicate 'sub-prime' conditions again. With the taxpayer on the hook for the losses directly this time, instead of the banks What could possibly go wrong?

The upshot of this is that social housing tennents are being booted out of the capital, to the provinces, en masse, already. Now private housing policy is geared to making sure people in your position won't be far behind them. All but the very rich are being priced out of Londinium. This is a deliberate policy

Whoah there - I've been here two years under a assumption that STW is populated primarily by the wealthy niche-hunter (he's got a couple of London flats - he calls them 'pads' and has two because he digs choice - a Tassimo, two Audis and a corral of carbon-framed steeds) CFH. Way to destroy my illusions, fella.

Mark Radcliffe was saying the other day that Croydon is effectively part of the north that accidentally found itself daaaaaahn saaaaaaaaarf.

In the same way that Cheshire isn't northern in anything other than its geographical location. Maybe there was a terrible mix up with the instructions when God was delivering the UK in Ikea flat pack form

London is expensive but it's a trade off as, generally speaking (and this is a generalisation), there is a lot more opportunity and carear upside there. It's a lifestyle choice, take a hit now in the hope of progression and pay rises or probable better lifestyle elsewhere.

It was a few years ago but there was a study which showed Machester, on average, had best disposable income on average as housing costs were much lower but salaries were quite good.

Re rents, you can rent a nice 3 bedroomed house in the Surrey Hills for £1k a month

"Joe - Member
I'm looking at coming back to live in the UK, after not paying tax abroad for a while. I earn what I thought was a decent ish salary, but after tax/NI etc it's looking increasingly like living hand and mouth. I've no idea how young families, nurses and teachers etc cope.

I've been looking at rent in the suburbs of London and my eyes are watering. You can't get a 1 bedroom flat for much less than £250 a week.

Whats more lots of people seem to have new cars, take holidays abroad, buy new carbon road bikes...where the hell does all this money come from?"

Nurses and teachers? Hardly the poor. I know home helps in Manchester who are paid £7 an hour. Have to use there own car (and therefore higher insurance), pay for there petrol and get paid only when they arrive at the job. 12 hour a day 6 days a week just to get the equivalent of minimum wage. They do this by making them self employed. They are the poor, they are the ones that deserve your sympathy not the well of teachers and nurses. I know of many many examples of this. I live on less than £200 a week pension (disability) although to be honest I don't find it that much of a struggle as I own my house and have not got a car (epilepsy). Example I shot 3 pigeons in my garden yesterday. Or put another way I have the time to be frugal. How the hell someone working 12 hours a day cope?

PS housing cost in the south? Trying looking at how many second homes there are, last estimate 300,000 And that does not included foreigners who buy London homes as an investment and never occupy them.

The main thing is. How on earth do you make it work on 20k? If you're take home is 1300 quid a month..you pay about £100 council tax, maybe £700 in rent, £20 on your phone, £30 on utilities, £130 on your travel card? It leaves you about £200 a month to live on.

Rent: you share a flat or house with others. Somewhere livable and well connected for transport inside zone 2 is <£600/month. You split council tax, utilities, TV licence, internet, etc too.

I've never lived in a flat on my own - lived in several house/flatshares until my (now) wife and I got a place together. She's never had her own place in the past either.

Travelcard? Cycle everywhere.

Mobile phone? £10 a month more than covers that these days unless you must have the latest thing subsidised by the network.

Lunch? Make it yourself rather than spending £5+ a day.

That would give the hypothetical £20k earner more like £500pm for food and anything else they might need.

I think that's very cheap. £7,200 a year! You could make that on a part time minimum wage job. You won't be living a life of luxury but you'd get by just fine.

+1, although I'd go further and point out the vast majority of students get by on about £4,500/p.a. loans and don't top it up with a job.

It's all about expectations. If you expect a house to yourself in a nice area, a new car and a holliday somewhere exotic, you're going to be sorely dissapointed. Get a house with some mates, live without a car and holliday in the UK and you can live for peanuts. Other than bike parts I never wanted for anything.